The inside line on motor sport and broadcasting.

Month: April 2015

Formula 1 returns to action in May after a break following the four flyaway races with the Spanish Grand Prix. The action is exclusively live on Sky Sports with highlights on BBC television. It should be noted that, due to the 2015 general election, the BBC schedules could change at short notice in the event of a hung parliament, so it is worth keeping an eye out as the weekend approaches.

The BBC Radio team are without Jennie Gow for at least the first two days of the weekend, with Suzi Perry down to do the radio preview show on BBC Radio 5 Live. Gow has other commitments, with round seven of the 2014-15 Formula E season from Monte Carlo. As of writing, no details are available concerning ITV4’s studio line-up for Monaco.

Below are all the details for Formula E and the F1, along with BTCC and IndyCar action from Indianapolis…

Three years ago, I set up The F1 Broadcasting Blog, and since then it has attracted visitors from all around the world..

– Total of 780,000 hits
– Over 6,200 followers on Twitter
– Average of 800 views per day
– Visitors from nearly 200 countries
– Connections with members of the F1 paddock and beyond

As regular readers will be aware, I have been juggling maintaining this blog with University work, which is quickly coming to an end! It’s funny, because I set this blog up at the end of my first year of University, and now, the end is near… expect the blog activity from me to pick back up in the next few weeks, although it will no doubt take time to get back into the swing of things. With another year passed, its also a good opportunity to see what the most read posts are in the blog’s history. There’s only one new post compared to this time last year, and even that post was written in 2013, I think that is because there has been no huge F1 broadcasting stories in the past year which have dominated the landscape. I’ve left the descriptions the same, so here is the top ten as it currently stands:

10. A few thoughts on Jake Humphrey leaving the BBC – September 18th, 2012
In September 2012, it was announced that Jake Humphrey would be leaving the BBC. In typical style, I published my reaction to his departure and speculated about who would replace him as F1 presenter. In all cases here, I was wide of the mark with my guesses.

9. Tom Clarkson added to BBC’s F1 TV team – March 6th, 2013
Tom Clarkson, who is he. Well, that’s what a lot of blog readers are still wondering, as this article has jumped back inside the top ten, despite Clarkson now in his third year as part of BBC’s Formula 1 team.

8. Doing the sums: the cost of viewing Sky Sports F1 this year – January 31st, 2013
Unsurprisingly, a popular article in 2013 involved people looking for the cheapest way to view Sky Sports F1 legally. The popularity of that article spawned a 2014 version, and more recently a 2015 version. Worryingly, the 2015 version is about to become outdated, with Sky’s prices going up again.

5. Predicting BT Sport’s MotoGP team – October 24th, 2013
I should have learnt my lesson with number ten to not bother predicting things, sadly I didn’t learn and decided to predict BT’s MotoGP team. Nevertheless, I don’t think anyone predicted who the presenter would turn out to be! Thankfully, that particular person didn’t remain with the team too long…

4. ITV4 win rights to screen MotoGP highlights – March 8th, 2014
The big news from early last year was that ITV4 were going to screen MotoGP highlights on Monday evenings, following BT Sport winning the rights to screen the series exclusively from 2014 onwards.

3. Georgie Thompson leaves Sky’s F1 team – February 15th, 2013
In a surprising move, Georgie Thompson left the Sky Sports F1 team after only a year in the role, with Natalie Pinkham taking over her duties. The news was broken exclusively on this blog, with mainstream newspapers picking the story up a week later.

2. Are current Sky ‘HD Pack only’ customers with Sky Sports F1 set for a shock? – June 1st, 2013
Any money related articles are popular. This, the first ‘HD Pack’ rumour falls into that category. Once again, I don’t envisage any future articles on this particular train of thought, the consensus for Sky subscribers is “switch from the legacy HD Pack, and you will lose Sky Sports F1”.

1. Gary Anderson to leave BBC’s Formula 1 team – January 13th, 2014
Another person leaving, one year after Thompson. This time it was Gary Anderson, as he parted company with the BBC team. This remains the most read article in the blog’s history.

So, the question is “what happens next?” As always, who knows, although as I mentioned earlier, I fully expect blog activity to pick up in the next few weeks. I know it has been slow on the blog front in the past few months, but thanks for all the interactions, for getting involved and for engaging with the blog on a weekly basis. It really is appreciated. Here’s to another year of blogging!

It was a good day for both Formula 1 and MotoGP this past Sunday, with both two and four wheels delivering solid figures across the board. Lewis Hamilton’s victory in the Bahrain Grand Prix peaked with 6.26 million, whilst Valentino Rossi’s battle with Marc Marquez sent BT Sport’s MotoGP coverage flying above the 300k barrier, according to unofficial overnight viewing figures.

Race
Live coverage of the Formula 1 race, screened live on BBC One from 15:00 to 18:05 averaged 3.83m (26.0%), peaking with 5.31m (30.8%) at 17:35 as Hamilton crossed the finishing line. Over on Sky, their coverage from 15:00 to 18:30 (using the equivalent slot to 2014), averaged 640k (4.3%), peaking with 951k (5.5%). It should be noted that with the race beginning at a later time, the total TV audience as the race draws to a conclusion is higher than usual, which means that figures are higher in previous years, but with lower shares.

The combined average of 4.47m is the third highest ever for Bahrain, only behind 2010 and 2012, with the combined peak of 6.26m (36.3%) only just shy of 2010’s 6.29m (47.9%). It’s a really good number for Bahrain and again shows the importance of having the mid-afternoon races on free-to-air television in order to draw in the casual viewers. Overall during the race, for every one viewer watching on Sky, there were a further 4.88 viewers watching on the BBC.

MotoGP and BTCC
Away from Bahrain, the main story surrounded the ongoing rise of BT Sport’s MotoGP figures. In Qatar, BT’s coverage peaked with 263k (1.4%), this number increased to 281k (1.2%) for Texas. Argentina was the first time ever that BT Sport’s MotoGP coverage surpassed the 300k barrier, as a record peak of 313k (1.4%) watched Valentino Rossi win on BT Sport 2. From 19:30 to 21:00, their coverage averaged 240k (1.1%) which is significantly above any number recorded in 2014.

ITV4’s highlights, screened at the later time of 22:00 on Monday due to the FA Youth Cup final, averaged 297k (2.1%), peaking with 379k (3.1%). I would put BT’s consistent rise down to the draw of Valentino Rossi, who is clearly back on form this season and drawing people to BT’s live coverage, which they need to take advantage of. Whether it will continue, I don’t know, but it is a shame that there is no live free-to-air coverage of the series. Yes, I’m afraid that klaxon had to be raised.

Staying with ITV4, their British Touring Car Championship from Donington Park peaked with 424k (3.8%) at 14:50. Their average of 199k (1.8%) is across eight hours from 10:30 to 18:30. The numbers slumped after 15:00 against the F1, never once hitting 200k.

The 2014-15 Formula E season will continue to be broadcast live only on ITV4 for the remainder of this season, it has been confirmed. Although viewing figures have failed to hit the original heights that it hit in its inaugural race, this blog reached out to ITV to see if there are any plans to simulcast the remaining races on their main channel in order to increase the exposure for the series.

According to overnight viewing figures from Overnights.tv, ITV has averaged 610k (6.0%) on Saturday afternoons between 14:00 to 16:30 so far this year, which would typically be Formula E’s slot for the remaining five races:

With suitable publicity, and given that there are five rounds in seven weekends, Formula E could reach, or even exceed that ITV slot average.

However, ITV say that there are no plans to put Formula E on their main channel this season: “I am sorry to disappoint you but there are no plans to show any coverage on ITV1. [..] We hope you enjoy our coverage on ITV4.” I guess this should not be too surprising, given that Formula 1 was the last motor sport series to be shown on ITV1, as it was back then, in 2008 but it is still disappointing.

A missed opportunity? Possibility. Whilst we should appreciate the fact that ITV shows a lot of motor sport on ITV4, at the end of the day, ITV have a flagship channel, and they should utilise that during the daytime at weekends to showcase events such as Formula E in the forthcoming months instead of screening back-to-back repeats. Formula E could& perform poorly on ITV’s main channel. But ITV won’t find that out unless they actually try it, which they should do for some of the above races.

Looking further ahead, I do hope Formula E remains on the ITV network for season two, but time will tell.

Last Friday, at the start of the Chinese Grand Prix weekend, Paola Saluzzi, a news presenter for Sky TG24 (the Italian version of Sky News), is said to have tweeted “His memory has returned and he has now remembered how #arrogant and #jealous he is. #hugeidiot.” The tweet is a reference to Alonso’s pre-season testing accident in Barcelona. Saluzzi deleted that tweet, replacing it with “Being fans imposes education, my mistake, and I just. I’m sorry.”

According to Gazzetta, Alonso refused to answer questions from Sky Italia as a result during the race weekend.

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